Domains
by Clearly Odd
Summary: As much as Jane may love Dirk, she really wishes he wouldn't get the urge to help her in the kitchen... Dirk/Jane established. A Secret Santa gift for Tumblr user youweremyridehome


A Secret Santa gift for the fantastic youweremyridehome (on Tumblr).

-/-/-

"Yo."

"Hello, Dirk!" Jane didn't even glance up from the counter where she was pouring over her recipe, not at all startled by her beau's sudden appearance.

She did seem slightly more unsettled, however, when he flashstepped into the kitchen and was suddenly leaning up against the counter at her side. "You know, I wish you wouldn't do that all the time. One of these days you're going to surprise the living daylights out of me while I'm holding something breakable!" She poked him gently in the side.

Dirk shrugged and smirked unapologetically. "Do you want some help?" He asked, scanning the recipe in Jane's hands from behind his shades.

Jane hesitated. "Um… I don't know, I thought you were in the middle of a project? I know how much you hate stopping work when you're in the thick of things."

As much as it was a stall, her statement was true. For as long as they'd known each other, Jane had never known Dirk to stop in the middle of one of his projects for anything less than a catastrophe. Now that they occupied the same cozy one-story house, the idea had only been driven home. The first thing Dirk had done after they had situated their things was soundproof the garage and set it up as a workshop (partially on Jane's insistence, who didn't want to find out how hard it was to get oil and grease out of a carpet). The first time he had disappeared into the space, it had been two days before Jane realized she hadn't seen him at all and that she might actually have to drag him out to see some daylight and get something to eat.

After that ordeal, Dirk had promised to come out at least once a day and assure her he was both alive and had eaten something other than a granola bar and entirely too much orange soda. However, he had never stopped in the middle of a project to ask her if she wanted help baking something-to be honest, she wasn't sure he'd ever asked her if she wanted help baking something and she also wasn't sure he could be trusted with the task. She'd seen his scrambled eggs and they weren't pretty. Moreover, she'd eaten his scrambled eggs and they weren't… well, they weren't good.

"Normally, I do," Dirk answered Jane's question, bringing her back to the present, "But I seem to have hit a wall. Which is to say, I ran out parts and I'm waiting for a package to arrive. I've gone as far as I can without the pieces I need, double and triple-checked everything, and if I stay in there any longer I'm gonna start fucking with things that don't need fucking with and that's when everything will go to hell."

"Ah," Jane nodded knowingly, kneeling down to pull the flour and sugar out of a cupboard, "When is your package supposed to arrive?"

"Site says it was loaded on the truck for delivery this morning, so, soon." Dirk replied, "But I should still have enough time to help you out."

"Oh, how nice." Jane didn't sound particularly enthused.

Dirk frowned slightly and pushed his iconic shades up so Jane could see his eyes. "You do know that if you asked, I'd drop a project to help you, right? You're important to me, even if it seems like I get wrapped up in my work."

Oh, dear. Not only did Dirk have the wrong end of the stick, but now it seemed as though he was afraid he'd slighted her in some way. Jane felt her resolve melting like snow in an oven under the blonde's sincere assurances. "Of course I know that, sweetie," She straightened up, reached over, and gripped his unoccupied hand briefly, before directing him towards a low cabinet behind him, "Why don't you get the big glass bowl out of there for me?"

Smiling slightly, Dirk let his shades drop back into place and squeezed Jane's hand in return before moving to the cabinet to retrieve what she had asked for. When he had to stoop down to look in, it was all Jane could do to contain her giggles; she was just barely of average height, standing at five foot five, and the bottom cabinets were perfectly easy for her reach down into. Dirk, however, was a ridiculous giant of six foot four and looked plenty silly trying to fit himself into the floor-level cupboard in search of a bowl. "Jane, there are approximately two hundred bowls under here, which one do you want?" He called from somewhere in the recesses of the cupboard.

"Oh, you know, the big glass one. It's clear." Jane told him as she pulled the remaining ingredients out other cabinets and drawers.

"I think you might have to widen your criteria a little. There are only about 10 bowls suiting your description; we might not find the one we're looking for." Dirk snarked, attempting to straighten up and look back at her, only to hit his head on the underside of the counter and swear, "Why is everything stored so low down in here?"

"Because I do all the cooking, you goon," Jane replied lightly before nudging him out of the way and locating the bowl she wanted with ease, "And this is the one I wanted."

"Right… You know, if you… about the cooking, I mean, I could…" He stumbled over his words in the endearing way he did whenever he was out of his element.

Jane took pity and cut him off. "Dirk, dear, if I didn't want to do all the cooking, you can bet I'd let you know," She smiled and passed him a liquid measuring cup, "Here, crack five eggs into this for me."

This was also true; Jane liked doing the cooking. If she didn't want to do it all on her own, she would've gotten Dirk to help her with it ages ago. But she enjoyed her time in the kitchen like Dirk enjoyed his time in the workshop (or like she assumed he did; she only ever entered when something happened that was loud enough to defy the sound-proofing); she had time to herself to think and to do what she was good at. And if she was honest-and if she wouldn't be, Roxy certainly would-she could be a bit ruthless in the kitchen. Roxy had tried baking a cake with her once, only to retreat to the dining table and watch after being criticized on her technique one too many times.

This time, however, Jane decided she would be more careful. She knew Dirk and she knew the poor boy had a more fragile ego than he let on and she knew, no matter how much he frustrated her when he was anywhere near the kitchen, that she had to try to be nice about things. Then the sound of an egg smashing on the counter and Dirk swearing quietly met her ears and she flinched. Or, if she couldn't be nice, she should at least be patient. "Doing okay over there?" She asked, pausing in her measurement of the flour.

"Yeah, it's fine. The integrity of these eggs is kinda lacking, though." Dirk answered.

"_What?_" The brunette turned around to see her boyfriend scooping a yolk off the counter.

"The shells are weak." He replied, pausing with hands full of egg bits.

"_Don't_ put that into the cup," She admonished and he froze like he had been thinking about it. He didn't protest, however, and dropped the lot of it in the sink. "And you have to be gentle with eggs. Or that will happen."

"I _was_ being gentle. I'm perfectly capable of being gentle. I assemble machines with minute parts and delicate wiring and shit like that. But when I was being gentle, they wouldn't crack." Dirk frowned, wiping his hands on a paper towel and contemplating the carton of eggs.

Jane chuckled. "Well, try for somewhere in between delicate machinery and smashing, then."

Dirk mumbled something behind her, but she didn't bother asking what it was, instead going back to measuring dry ingredients. After one more wasted egg, five yolks and whites found their way into the glass cup and Dirk nudged it into her line of vision. "Okay, now what?"

"Hm…" Jane scanned the counter for something easy for Dirk to do. She knew the blonde was likely smarter in many ways than most of them, but it was a hard fact to remember while he was busy swearing at eggs while trying to crack them into a cup. "Why don't you measure out the sugar? One and half cups of the white, and-"

"Metric units are more accurate." Dirk interrupted, glancing down at the measuring cups for the dry ingredients.

"Yes, well, the recipe isn't in metric units, is it?" Jane huffed, thrusting a plastic bowl into his grip, "Now, one and half cups of the white and one cup of the brown."

Dirk looked almost disappointed by the one-cup and half-cup that Jane passed to him, but had enough sense not to argue the point. Instead, he measured out the sugar while Jane cut up butter and dropped it in a mixing bowl. "Okay, I'm going cream this butter and then you can put in the sugar." She told him, starting up her trusty hand mixer.

For this part, at least, Jane was glad to have a hand, rather than having to stop and start the mixer in between adding ingredients. Dirk watched her swirl the beaters through the butter with practiced ease before dumping in the sugar obediently when she told him to. The eggs went in smoothly after that and she switched the machine off and lifted it out of the bowl. Things seemed to be moving along nicely now, and Jane thought perhaps having Dirk as a helper wasn't so bad. Then he spoke again. "You know, I bet I could fix that thing up for you." He said, gesturing towards the hand mixer.

Jane sighed and dropped the beaters in the sink. "Dirk, have you by any chance heard the phrase, 'if it's not broken, don't fix it'?"

"Of course I have, and it's a stupid phrase. If we went around allowing perfectly useful things to exist without tinkering with them and working on them, how would we make things better?" Dirk replied, absently accepting the bowl when Jane pushed it into his hands. "You know, beaters used to be hand operated, and I'm sure that worked well enough, but if someone hadn't improved on it, you wouldn't have that electric mixer now."

"Mhm," Jane hummed placatingly and tipped the bowl in Dirk's hands so she could scrape the mixture out over the flour, "But my mixer is fine, Dirk. You don't need to do anything to it."

"I bet that's what they said about the hand-operated mixers before…" The blonde began before Jane pointed her butter-covered spoon squarely in his face.

"If you lay a hand on my mixer, mister, you will find that I will be very unforgiving." She told him severely.

She could all but see Dirk blink in surprise behind his shades before regaining his affectation of calm. "Alright." He shrugged.

"Good." Jane replied, scooping the last of the creamed butter out of the bowl and banishing Dirk to the sink to wash it.

Cookie dough was successfully rendered thereafter and things were once again moving smoothly. Jane finished two batches before asking Dirk if he wanted to scoop out the cookies for the next one, seeing no harm in it. "Sure," He accepted the portion scoop and went to work creating the most asinine batch of cookies Jane had ever seen.

"Dirk, what on earth are you doing?" She asked, watching her boyfriend place a carefully measured ball of dough onto the baking sheet.

"Doing what you told me; portioning out cookie dough." Dirk looked up and quirked an eyebrow at her.

"Yes, but why are you doing it like _that?_"

In the few minutes he'd had the scoop, Dirk had carefully filled it with bits of dough from every part of the bowl and leveled it off against the edge before positioning the ball very precisely on the pan. While the rows were very uniform, he had managed to fill a quarter of the sheet in the time it took her fill it in its entirety. "The cookies will bake more evenly if they're the same size and distance apart."

"Oh, and you're not counting chocolate chips, too?" Jane asked in exasperation.

"No, just doing a rough estimate. I could, though, if-"

"Please don't." Jane cut him off, "Look, Dirk, haven't the previous pans of cookies come out just fine, even without such finicky placement?"

"Sure," Dirk agreed, "But they could be…" Jane raised her eyebrows and the man trailed off.

"They could be _what_, precisely?" Jane asked, silently daring him to say 'better.'

Before Dirk had the misfortune of having to reply, however, the doorbell rang. "Probably my package. I'll… uh. I'll just…" Dirk handed the scoop over to Jane, who continued staring at him until he had retreated from the kitchen.

When he was finally gone, Jane released a breath and continued scooping out the dough in a way that wasn't completely ridiculous, listening as the interior door to the garage opened and shut.

-/-/-

That evening, as Jane cleaned up the remains of the takeout they'd ordered for dinner-strangely enough, she hadn't felt much like cooking anymore after she'd finished the cookies-she heard a knock at the kitchen door. She turned and saw Dirk leaning against the doorjamb, looking so nonchalant that she knew it was put-on. "You don't have to knock to come into the kitchen, Dirk." She told him.

He shrugged. "You knock if you want to come into the garage. And I didn't realize before today, but it's kind of the same thing, isn't it?"

Jane sighed. "Not quite. I like being in the kitchen because it's always been a happy place full of people for me." She stooped for a moment to place the leftover Chinese in the fridge before straightening and facing him, "But you helping me… Well, I don't know, how would you feel if I came into your workshop to help with one of your fantastical robots or something?"

"I'd love to show you how to make something, actually." Dirk replied easily.

"Oh. Well, you're a very strange man, you know that?" Jane asked with little smile.

"It's been mentioned."

"Now, it's not that I don't appreciate the sentiment, but cooking is something I enjoy doing on my own." Jane leaned back against the counter and stared over at Dirk, her eyes pleading with him to understand.

And he really did seem to. "Fair enough," He nodded and stepped up in front of Jane to wrap his arms loosely around her back.

Jane pulled him closer until he was flush against her and she could lean her head on his chest. "Thank you."

They held each other in silence for a moment before Dirk spoke, his voice rumbling through his chest and against her cheek. "Do you _want_ me to show you how to make something in the workshop?" He asked, pulling back slightly to look down at her.

"Good heavens, no," Jane shook her head, "Thank you, though."

Dirk shrugged. "Well, the offer's open."

"I'll keep that in mind," Jane smiled and turned to face the counter in the loose circle of Dirk's arms, "D'you want a cookie?"

"Hell yeah, let's see if irritating the crap out of you was worth it."

Jane laughed and reached for the plate.

-/-/-


End file.
